Shiitake

Lentinula edodes

Farmed on logs for a thousand years, now one in four of the world's cultivated mushrooms, and studied by immunologists since the 1960s.

Overview

One in every four cultivated mushrooms on earth is a shiitake.

Shiitake takes its name from the shii tree, Castanopsis cuspidata, a relative of the oak and the sweet chestnut: shii for the tree, take for mushroom. In the forests of East Asia it fruits on fallen trunks of shii, oak and beech, a broad brown cap over white gills, the cap often cracking into a pale, flower-like pattern as the air dries.

It lives entirely on dead wood, which is why people learned to farm it so early: supply the right logs and it will grow. Chinese woodcutters were doing so around a thousand years ago. In the kitchen it is rich, smoky and savoury, and stronger still when dried. In the laboratory it has been a subject of medical research since 1969.

In figures

• 1,000 years of cultivation, since Song-dynasty China, when woodcutters learned to bring it out of felled logs.
• 1 in 4 of the world's cultivated mushrooms is a shiitake: more than 11 million tonnes a year.
• 28 million years since the common ancestor of the shiitake genus, which a 2023 genome study traced across every continent except Europe and Antarctica.
• 1969 the year Japanese scientists published the first of the studies that made shiitake a subject of medical research, in Nature.

Other names

Shiitake means “shii-tree mushroom”. Many books translate it as “oak mushroom”, but the shii is a cousin of the oak, not an oak itself.

• Xiang gu — Fragrant mushroom (China)
• Donko — Winter mushroom (Japan)
• Huagu — Flower mushroom (China)

What it's studied for

• Raised immune-cell activity and gut immunity in healthy adults who ate it daily (Human trial)
• Lowered blood triglycerides in adults with borderline-high levels (Human trial)
• Reduced plaque and gum inflammation as a mouth rinse (Human trial)
• Lowers cholesterol, through a compound that works differently from statins (Animal)
• Feeds beneficial gut bacteria (Lab and animal)
• Stops the growth of bacteria and yeasts, including Candida (Lab)

History of use

Shiitake has been a food, a gift and a crop for longer than almost any other mushroom.

around 200 · Japan

Japanese tradition records shiitake presented to the emperor as an offering, around the year 200.

around 1000 to 1100 · China

A woodcutter named Wu San Kwung is credited with working out how to grow shiitake on felled logs, and that soaking and striking the logs brought on a fresh crop. Temples in China honour him, and his work is celebrated with an annual feast day. By the early 13th century the method was written down in Longquan, in today’s Zhejiang.

1368 to 1644 · Ming dynasty

Chinese writers described shiitake as a general stimulant, a remedy for colds and an aid to the circulation.

1874 · Japan

The British consul in Japan listed shiitake among the country’s exports. A few years later the British mycologist Miles Berkeley gave it its first scientific name, from a specimen bought in Japan.

1942 · Japan

The agricultural scientist Kisaku Mori developed spawn-plug inoculation: drill a log, tap in wooden pegs colonised by the fungus, and wait. Log growers still use the method today.

1969 · Japan

Researchers in Tokyo reported in Nature that polysaccharides from shiitake acted through the body’s defences. Within a year they had isolated the most active of them, lentinan.

What's inside the mushroom

Lentinan

Polysaccharides

Lentinan is shiitake's signature beta-glucan: a backbone of glucose with two short side branches for every five links, which coils into a triple helix. It works through the immune system, binding receptors on macrophages and monocytes, which then rally other immune cells.

It became a licensed injectable immune therapy in Japan, and in mice, lentinan taken by mouth is picked up by immune tissue in the wall of the gut. It is also sensitive to heat, which is one reason shiitake should always be cooked.

Eritadenine

Alkaloids

Shiitake is the richest known source of eritadenine, a compound built on adenine, one of the building blocks of DNA. Eritadenine blocks an enzyme called S-adenosylhomocysteine hydrolase, and in rats a diet containing just 0.005% of it cut cholesterol by a quarter in a week, by a different route from statins.

Levels vary widely between strains, and some carry up to ten times more than earlier measurements suggested.

Lenthionine

Aroma

The smell of dried shiitake is lenthionine, a ring of five sulphur atoms and two carbons that forms as the mushroom dries, which is why dried shiitake tastes stronger than fresh. A 2023 genome study identified the two enzymes behind its formation. In the laboratory, lenthionine stops yeasts and moulds at concentrations comparable to established antifungal drugs.

Ergothioneine and vitamin D

Antioxidants

Mushrooms are the richest food source of ergothioneine, an antioxidant amino acid that only fungi and some bacteria can make, and shiitake is a good source. The human body absorbs it through a dedicated transporter. Shiitake also carries ergosterol, which sunlight turns into vitamin D2.

25% cholesterol

The fall in cholesterol in rats fed eritadenine at just 0.005% of their diet, in one week.

Blood cholesterol in rats, indexed to the usual diet

Eritadenine at 0.005% of the diet, one week	75
Usual diet	100

Sugiyama et al., Journal of Nutrition, 1995.

At the table

Dried shiitake carries more flavour than fresh, because drying builds its sulphur aroma. Soak the caps until they swell to around three times their size, and keep the soaking water for stock: it carries flavour and some of the eritadenine, which dissolves into the water. The prized grade is donko, with thick, domed caps picked before they fully open.

The research

Shiitake has been a subject of medical research since 1969. The human trials below are the closest to how people eat or take it: whole shiitake, or an extract of it, every day.

Hypocholesterolemic action of eritadenine is mediated by a modification of hepatic phospholipid metabolism in rats

Sugiyama et al. · 1995 · Animal

Fed rats eritadenine.

Cholesterol fell, through changes in how the liver handles fats.

Read study

An examination of antibacterial and antifungal properties of constituents of shiitake (Lentinula edodes) and oyster (Pleurotus ostreatus) mushrooms

Hearst et al. · 2009 · Lab

Tested a shiitake water extract against 39 bacteria, yeasts and moulds.

It inhibited 85% of them.

Read study

Testing a low molecular mass fraction of a mushroom (Lentinus edodes) extract formulated as an oral rinse in a cohort of volunteers

Signoretto et al. · 2011 · Human, randomised

90 young volunteers rinsed with a shiitake extract, water or Listerine for 11 days.

Less plaque than with water, and less gum inflammation than with either water or Listerine.

Read study

Consuming Lentinula edodes (shiitake) mushrooms daily improves human immunity: a randomized dietary intervention in healthy young adults

Dai et al. · 2015 · Human, randomised

52 healthy adults ate 5 or 10 g of dried shiitake a day for four weeks.

Immune cells multiplied more readily, the gut's protective antibody (sIgA) rose, and CRP, a marker of inflammation, fell.

Read study

Effects of shiitake culinary-medicinal mushroom, Lentinus edodes, bars on lipid and antioxidant profiles in individuals with borderline high cholesterol: a double-blind randomized clinical trial

Spim et al. · 2021 · Human, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled

68 adults with borderline-high cholesterol ate shiitake cereal bars daily for 66 days.

Triglycerides fell by 10%, alongside better antioxidant status.

Read study

Insights into oral lentinan immunomodulation: Dectin-1-mediated lymphatic transport from Peyer's patch M cells to mononuclear phagocytes

Wang et al. · 2024 · Animal

Gave mice lentinan by mouth.

Immune tissue in the gut took it up through the Dectin-1 receptor.

Read study

The 2015 trial compared two doses without a placebo group, and the mouth-rinse trial used a purified fraction of the extract.

Good to know

Always cook shiitake. Raw or undercooked shiitake can cause shiitake dermatitis, a striking whip-like rash that appears a day or two later and usually clears within a couple of weeks. Avoid shiitake if you have a mushroom allergy or have reacted to it before. In one small study, daily shiitake powder raised a type of white blood cell (eosinophils) in half the volunteers, which settled when they stopped. Dried shiitake is high in purines, so take care if you have gout, and if you take blood-thinning medication, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are awaiting surgery, check with your doctor first.

Where you'll find it

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The Mushroom Index

• Lion’s Mane
• Reishi
• Cordyceps
• Chaga
• Shiitake
• Maitake

References

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